


No Present Like Time

by FionaSo, waffleguppies



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Shaiman/Shaiman & Wittman/Greig
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27496561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FionaSo/pseuds/FionaSo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/waffleguppies/pseuds/waffleguppies
Summary: There’d never been any limit to the number of impossible things Willy could believe- before or after breakfast- but he still struggled to grasp how fast the time had gone, how Charlie had turned from eleven to thirteen, how himself and Sarah had turned from cautious, everyday acquaintances into...
Relationships: Mrs. Bucket/Willy Wonka
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	No Present Like Time

The noon daylight spilled into the open workshop through a pale, propped window and washed it vividly alive. Greenery had been carefully dangled from the rooms high industrial ceilings, and, like lounging clouds, they seemed to approve of their station. Trails of their foliage draped lazily downward and stretched out fresh shoots. Young, curious leaves unfurled towards warm sunshine, and the light was made animate by the swirls of dust motes kicked up by Sarah Bucket’s sensible heels.

The woman moved around the middle of the room, her fingers active as they searched out the seams and folds of the garment in front her. Thin, clever digits tugged the fabric a little here or there, as shrewd eyes ensured it was a proper fit over the dress form. The waistcoat met her approval, and she moved on to a tweed coat, pulling it over the form and beginning the same process of deliberation.

After more of her careful exploration, Sarah took a nervous step back and shoved her fists deep into the pockets of her sewing apron.

The garment before her was perfect; she knew it was, just as she knew it would suit the man it was intended for utterly. It was also entirely to her liking. It took very little effort to recall the few occasions Willy had stood for her, wearing the half-finished parts, and allowed her professional touches as she measured and adjusted him.

A warm flush tumbled through her, downwards, and Sarah exhaled. She deliberately turned her mind from those thoughts as she turned her body from the dress form. Crossing the room, she took up the remaining pieces of the full outfit with the intention of getting them ready for display.

Yes, she unquestionably liked it. Now, she just hoped he would too.

Willy paused at the head of the winding loft staircase, straightening his tie.

For a long time, this workshop loft had stood empty. He hadn’t meant to abandon it, and it had felt wrong to neglect any room of his factory like that, because how could you really say you loved a place if you didn’t appreciate every part? Still, even after his time away, and all the years between, he’d found that some things still felt… troubling, better left alone.

Suggesting it to Sarah as a good workspace had been one of the brightest ideas he’d had that quarter-century. Under her hands it had become a completely different space. Such a huge change, in such a little time.

Time. There’d never been any limit to the number of impossible things he could believe- before or after breakfast- but he still struggled to grasp how fast the time had gone, how Charlie had turned from eleven to thirteen, how himself and Sarah had turned from cautious, everyday acquaintances into...

Willy settled his hands on his cane, his mouth tightening. Just for a moment, and then he looked up with a brisk rousing breath, and started to cross the short landing to the workshop’s double-doors. They were latticed and crisply-painted, the left propped open, just a bit.

Time. Maybe the joke was on him, for always saying that there was so much of it. It had certainly been on his mind, lately, how two years felt like a long time and no time at all, how quickly he’d wanted everything sorted out and resolved and tied up in a neat bow, and how long he found himself taking over it, now.

He couldn’t say that he felt sad, or  _how_ he felt, exactly, just now. Nervous, eager, hesitant; his feelings were a rainbow wash of colors, light and dark, and for his own peace of mind he mostly never tried too hard to pin any of them down. But something pulled at him, insistent, warning him that ignoring it for much longer would cause pain… and not just for him. That was the important part.

He stepped up and knocked, gently, on the workshop’s door.

Sarah’s stomach jumped a little at the sound, and her fingers fumbled over the neat pair of spats she was buttoning  on a shoe form.

She was expecting him, and so she called out for him to enter and kept her attention on the sewn cotton in her hands. She purposely brushed the fabric smooth, and then busied herself with tidying away the haberdashery strewn across her workspace. She glanced at Willy as he entered, and the world shifted a little to feel a great deal more delightful with his addition.

On reflection, it hadn’t always been that way. Her first forays into Willy’s world, his habits and lifestyle, had been fraught with differences and misunderstandings. He was an inscrutable man at the best of times. But he had promised to try, and so she had known, even when things had seemed impossible, that he was making an effort- for her or for Charlie, it had made no difference then. They had both made an effort. That their interactions weren’t an effort anymore, his company having softened and tentatively warmed her to him, had been on her mind for some time now. Whether it was or ever could be on his…

Well.

Sarah was of a practical sort with a stiff upper lip that had gotten her through most things. She breathed a level, composing breath, took the whole depth of her regard, and placed it aside. Then, sensing that he was crossing the room to meet her, she turned, resting her hip at a casual angle against the table. She crossed her arms, but her smile was an open, affectionate thing.

“Hello, Willy. Did Charlie give you any trouble this morning?”

“Fully as much as always,” he said, as he reached her side, and his answering smile was brilliant. “However do we cope with such a little hellion?”

The sweep with which he removed his hat was less theatrical than usual, much more muted a movement. Before she could wonder why, he reached inside- at a passing glance, maybe a little deeper than he should have been able to, maybe not- and took out a miniature pastry cloche. He held it out to her.

“I’m afraid we overran,” he said. “He had to hurry straight off to class, but he wanted me to give you this... it’s his best try so far.” Inside the little dome, a tuft of bright sugar daisies clustered in their bed of glossy leaves. Each stem was a separate pulled strand of light green, and the petals had been tinted pink at the ends, brushed with a careful hand. A fat little ladybug perched in the middle of the arrangement, its shiny shell spotted with black.

“Sugar glass,” explained Willy, in a hushed tone, like a naturalist expounding on some rare wild specimen. “The devil’s in the details, heat it up just a fraction too fast or leave it to sit a second too long and it comes out cloudy, you can’t do a thing with it. And that’s just the basic syrup… after that, the real fun begins.” Full of pride for his pupil, he could almost overlook how his heart jumped when she took the little cloche from his hand.

Almost.

“Take it from me, Sarah, he really is doing _wonderfully_ well.”

She never doubted that Charlie would excel. Even before he had ever laid hands on a dipping tool or a pastry brush, he had brought home books from the library dedicated to the making of confectionaries. Then he had proceeded to devour every word of them, continued to pour over the details, had memorized theory without any means at all to learn it practically.

But still, hearing the praise in Willy’s voice for her son was both warming and reaffirming.

The little sculpture was true to its name. It was smooth as glass, strikingly delicate. The daylight passing through it gathered in its form and was then amplified, as if deep from within it. At turns it was both dark and effulgent, casting an array of tinted light which gathered in multicolored pools in the palm of her hand.

Though it was not the work of a master, it was a skilled and lovely little thing. A marvel that, even to her untrained eye, Sarah could tell held potential.

“He was talking to me all last night about this,” she began, her dark eyes wide and happy while she spoke in the same soft tones as Willy. “He explained it, but imagination is Charlie’s department. And yours. I couldn’t entirely picture it. It’s beautiful.”

She placed it gently on the table top and crouched to see it closer, resting her arms and propping her chin on the back of her hands.

“He’s learning so much. And growing up faster than I know how to handle. He told me last night that you suggested sugar glass. Did he choose the subject?”

“Yes, organic shapes do come easier, they’re the best to learn with, but he came up with the design on his own. He never fails to challenge himself. Those stems-” His finger almost-not-quite touched the cloche, directing her eye. “See how they’re actually taking the weight of the petals? Not easy to pull off.”

He had worried, at first, he’d suspected that Sarah tended to see the time Charlie spent in the factory as the enemy of his schoolwork. He’d sensed her unease whenever the one had intruded on the other, or even threatened to. He could tell, back then, that despite agreeing to try- and despite honestly trying- she couldn’t help seeing it all as… _iffy,_ shaky and ephemeral and so much less reliable than school.

So different, now. Not much due to him, in any measure- Charlie’s fine handling of the huge upheaval in his life and the change of pace, his solidly improving grades, the way he paced himself with the kind of self-management many people far older (and ostensibly wiser) than him _never_ learned, how he’d taken to each new challenge like a duck to water, all these things had told Sarah that she didn’t need to worry far more eloquently than Willy ever could. Until at length they’d arrived at a time and a place when he could show Charlie’s progress to her, and they could share and appreciate a moment like this, without reservation.

And he loved to see her like this, content and rapt in something she treasured, the gentle wonder and pride in her face. He had to move- in case he found he couldn’t- and so he hummed and gave the cloche a tiny tap with his index, as if that was all the propulsion he needed to push himself up and away from the workbench, stepping back with a smile and a hitch in his throat. 

“I can’t wait to get him started with the ones that really grow. But, no sense in rushing... we’ll build that bridge when we get to it.”

Sarah looked up at him through her eyelashes.

She cherished this side of him, his passion for his work that went beyond doing it and included sharing it. He was such a sunny spot of enthusiasm that it was at odds with the stiff, guarded way he had held himself when they first began this strange, cohabitive, completely platonic, joint parental project. It meant the world to her that when he shared what he loved he no longer looked as if he expected to be slapped back into place for it.

He moved back and the air carried the herbal scent of his aftershave. It was bright and lively, a mix of talcum and bergamot and some citrus top note she could never identify.

So different from Arthur’s, she thought.

She had never fallen out of love with her late husband. She’d known him for only a decade, and had been married to him for even less. It troubled her sometimes to recognize the passage of time, and that Arthur was a fixed point in that span. He was impermanent, but immutable, while she was alive- a person who was growing, changing, _feeling._ She reminded herself that there wasn’t any reason to feel guilty over those things.

Sarah closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath of Willy’s scent, determined to savor and enjoy _this_ moment with _this_ man. Then she stood, taking Charlie’s project up with her.

“Cross that bridge,” she said, buoyant despite her brief melancholy. As she spoke she turned to find a place for the little wonder. “Unless you actually build a bridge. Between the two of you I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Sarah perused her shelves, clean systematized alcoves with plenty of room. She found a sill the sun couldn’t reach directly and gently put the lovely piece down, twisting it to and fro for the best way to display it.

“Speaking of challenges, mine is on the dress form, spats are on the table, and tea is ready. I won’t hover if you want to have a look at it.”

“I have to admit I’m dying of curi-”

As she moved away, as he looked up and focused for the first time on the wider space of the room, he finally took in the form at its centre. His lively and somewhat redundant words tumbled over each other to a standstill, and for a few long moments he just stood there, head slightly on one side, as still as the mannequin.

It wasn’t so much that it was a beautiful, classic suit- although it was- or that it floored him that Sarah could master and make such a thing and still seem to sincerely believe that she lacked creativity- although it did. It was something nearly uncanny, the way the cut and colours she’d chosen struck such a tone with him, an answering note in his sense of self that a person could only feel for their favourite, most carefully-curated possessions. At least, he’d thought so, until now. He’d certainly never thought that a thing like this, created by some other person with no reference to his own opinion, could strike so close to the mark, or feel so completely like _him._

And that she’d made it for him- for _him,_ every stitch, from the pale seafoam blue silk of the tie and crisp collar to the cut of the waistcoat, the whole timeless without appearing dated, the colours whimsical and striking while staying tasteful and curiously, if he’d had to pick a word, nostalgic.

The answering thought would have been a strange one, for most people, but not as strange as it was for him- _it was as if she knew him._ Picking any words, though, would have meant having some to choose from in the first place. He was almost struck dumb, with just the tiniest particle of breath left to form a very, very quiet-

_“...oh.”_

Sarah stepped back from Charlie’s work, to consider its angle. Satisfied with its way, she turned her attention back to her company, but the sight that greeted her was difficult to deconstruct.

Giving a gift, especially one such as this, was an awkward and nerve-wracking spectator sport, and rather than intervene in whatever was happening between him and the dress form, Sarah took herself over to the tea service and prepared two cups, fighting back an embarrassed blush that was steadily making its way up her face.

He was being dreadfully quiet.

She took her time to make his tea the way he liked it. And when she turned she was unnerved to see that he hadn’t moved much at all.

She carried their drinks over and pressed a cup and saucer into his hands. She took a sip of her own to steady her nerves. They both stared at the suit. Her eyes were happy to suddenly second guess every detail they sought out, despite her earlier conviction that it was perfect.

She searched for something to say, feeling rather silly when what fell out of her mouth, kind, reassuring and thickly coated in her own worries, was:

“If you need me to change anything-“

Willy blinked several times in quick succession, coming back to life. Mildly confused that he found himself holding a cup, he set it down on the bench.

“It’s perfect,” he said, almost before she’d finished speaking, in his hurry to make up for his silence and not leave her thinking for a single second that it wasn’t, or that he didn’t think it was. Turning, he caught her anxious expression and moved to take her hands, half-laughing, shaking his head at the very notion that he would want her to change it. That he would be that gauche, ungrateful... blind.

“How did you do it? It’s so… it’s so _me._ I hardly thought-” He broke off, gazing past her at the dress form, but when he looked back to her again he was smiling. An uncommon smile; an earnest blend of pleasure and astonishment, and a touch of something quite sober.

“May I try it on?”

Her hands were still full of cup and saucer when he took the backs of them. She wasn’t prepared for the sudden warmth over her shoulders, down her spine. The flutter of her heart as her whole body relaxed and softened at his touch, a sort of hyper awareness as every sense was turned to the brush of his fingers against her wrists.

And even headier was the sight of him, his clear adoration for what she had made, the vulnerable span of his neck from his collar stretching to the shell of his ear, exposed as his attention moved to the suit, only glimpsed really before he looked back to her.

It took a great deal of effort for her to find her voice.

“O-of course,” she breathed, blinked, then moved away from him, putting her tea down. “And as for how, well, it’s nothing exceptional really. I found a number of patterns I thought might work, assembled some ideas from each. I made essentially a sloper; a pattern with no seam allowances. Just something that works as a good jumping off point. From there it was just finding the materials I thought would work.”

What she didn’t explain was the thought process behind it. The way she had, when in doubt over one decision or another, conjured him in her mind. How she had, more through feeling than actual logic, made most of her choices. She had thought of his attitude, his bright laughter, the cut of his clothing over his form.

She didn’t mention the sight of him she had observed nearly a half year back now, napping in the garden. His shirt sleeves rolled up, his coat tossed aside. The flora had been going through its own glossy, splendiferous version of spring, shooting up tentative new sugar shoots and lending an oddly earthy and tangible quality to the rather alien dreamlike tableau. The image of it, of him, was so clear and dear it had imprinted and wouldn’t leave her. It would never leave her.

Sarah, wrestling with her own reactions, picked up the wooden shoe forms from the table and carried them over to him, putting them in his hands.

“I’m glad you like it. Here are the spats. You know where the changing screen is. I’ll bring the rest over while you get changed.”

Willy nodded somewhat wryly, as he removed his coat. He deserved that, he supposed. Considering the company she’d been keeping, it really would have been stranger by this point if she _hadn’t_ picked up something of the art of answering a question without really answering it at all.

Before disappearing around the screen, he hung his coat on the very side of it. In the shade behind, he leaned his cane against the natural angle of the concertina fold and let out a calming breath, before beginning to loosen his tie.

As easy as it was to step out of her sight, it was much harder to keep his mind from conjuring her up, just as clearly as if she’d still been right in front of him. When they’d first met, and for a good long while afterwards, she’d seemed so acutely aware of her hands, had done almost anything to keep them tucked away or occupied, constantly on the move. It meant more to him than he could say that she was no longer reluctant to let him see them, or to let them rest for a moment, warm and delicate, in his.

The spats were almost the same light cream as the suit, with a slight, pleasant variation. Their buttons were little glassy domes of very deep purple, almost black, catching the light like beads of ink. He paused for a moment, in the act of unbuttoning his shirt at the neck, and put out a hand to his cane.

“You do realise,” he called, with his attention back on his shirt buttons, “Charlie and I used the exact same creative process you just described to make our sugar sculpts this morning. From ideas to execution- caramel or calico, it really makes no difference.”

“ _You do realise_ ,” she responded with cheek and an impish grin, carefully gathering the suit up and taking it over to the screen. She reached up, and draped it neatly over, trying to ward off any creases. “I’ve always viewed sewing as a very logical process. Though, I suppose I’ve had to be creative with it at times. It just always felt like the end goal was something very practical. You know, necessary.” She stood holding the matching pocket square and turned her back on the screen to gaze out over the room.

Since the night Willy had apologized to her two years ago Sarah had only ever made oblique references to her families past. She didn’t want to bring attention to it at all if it could be helped. He had a rough idea of what their life was like before coming to live at the factory, and what he offered was a new home with a built-in future that was so hopeful and kind that to dredge up any past suffering with him felt like a disservice; wrong somehow, and unfair. Not because she got the impression she couldn’t, but because she never wanted Willy to think any part of her still resented him for what he had seen.

Sarah fiddled with the gold wedding band of her necklace, thoughtfully.

She’d never even spoken to him about Arthur. He knew of course, in the sense that he understood she had been married, that Charlie’s father had passed away. But beyond that she had been nebulous on details. Not that she owed him any of course, but it had been weighing heavy on her mind of late. She wondered at times if Arthur was part of Willy’s reticence to…

But no. Willy was a difficult man to read, so while at times she had _thought_ she had seen an inkling of feelings deeper than just friendly affection in him, those instances had been so fleeting that it was easy enough to convince herself, or at least mostly convince herself, that they couldn’t be real at all.

“Maybe you could teach me how to make sugar glass,” she said, pulling herself from her thoughts. Absently she folded the pocket square up in her hands.

“Creating seems easier when you have someone who moves you to create.”

Willy’s hands halted for a moment, halfway through adjusting his cuffs. It was true, although for most of his life, it had never been his main motivation. Throughout his life he had always exercised his will to create, built on it and honed it, for a whole heap of reasons, as changeable as his mood. Sometimes in spite of people who had told him he shouldn’t, or that he was doing it wrong, sometimes simply in a spirit of pure enjoyment of the act of creation, in and of itself. Or sometimes, because there was an empty space in the world and he saw how to fill it, as precise as an architect with blueprints in hand.

And sometimes, out of a drive so powerful and desperate that it felt painful, physically painful, not to.

Oh, he loved making things _for_ people, things to dazzle and delight that he could share, things that brought life and color to a world that usually seemed to stand in dire need of it. Maybe, some time ago, he might even have thought that this was just the same idea as Sarah described.

It wasn’t, of course. It wasn’t even close.

Compared to Sarah’s, and Charlie’s, his motivations felt specious, even selfish. He had thought it over before, many times, had often quietly and privately disappeared down the old familiar rabbit-hole of whether doing something altruistic really _was_ altruistic when you loved the accolades, the applause, or even the satisfaction of making other people happy.

There were only two facts he was really certain of... firstly, that Sarah and Charlie, without any apparent effort on their part, _made_ him less selfish, in the same way that sunlight makes a tree grow towards it, and secondly, that Sarah moved him to create. Moved him, in more ways than one.

His face was troubled as he picked up the wonderful waistcoat. “I’d love to teach you,” he said, his voice a little preoccupied. “It’s certainly a logical art. Sticky,” he added, thoughtfully, “but logical.”

On the other side of the screen, Sarah had tensed at her own words- words that were too honest to have been spoken in the open air. And his voice, when he responded, sounded distant, and she worried suddenly that she’d made a mistake. But when he stepped out from behind the screen any dismay, along with anything else which might have been on her mind, was immediately dislodged.

Off-kilter was how he always made her feel. Sarah thought she was good at being practical, at compartmentalizing her own desires when necessary, for her family’s sake as much as her own, but when it came to this man her feelings behaved more like a jack-in-the-box; like something that could spring at any moment and expose them both to her foolishness.

Seeing him now, she felt as struck as a woman half her age, as if she were a girl again going through the fervent rush of a destabilizing crush. And it was nearly frightening how she could almost forget (almost) the kinds of devastation these feelings could bring.

He was fetching in his new suit. It was a delightful mixture of whimsy and strength. Soft and yet masculine. It was exactingly cut, fitted to flatter him, and doing it tremendously.

It was only missing a final touch.

Her eyes roved over him, appreciating his shape. She placed the folded bit of silk in his coat pocket, and adjusted it diligently before she ran her hands over the seams of his shoulders and then down his chest to smooth his vest. She silently appreciated the feel of the buttons, the smooth silk, and, him, warm and solid, beneath it. She reached for his tie to give it a slight adjustment and caught his eye.

“You look marvelous,” she breathed.

The light pressure on his chest was electric, reminding him- as if he had a hope of forgetting it- how completely entangled he was in her, her presence, her touch. Her gaze was academic, serious, as she looked over her work, and then filled with warmth and a curious vulnerability as she turned her face up towards his.

Willy could absolutely have understood anyone, with half an opportunity to observe him and his behavior on a daily basis, calling him vain. He was a  _spectacle,_ he made sure of it. He looked however he wanted and acted however he chose without turning to anybody else for reference or reassurance because, like most grand illusions, stopping to check that it was having the desired impact, even for a moment, stalled and scuppered the whole effect. The fact remained, though, that when it came to the core of him, the person at the center of the mirage... he had very little clear idea of that person at all.

He thought he might have had a stronger idea, at one point, than he did now. His own mother had once called him ‘plain,’ which was a very dangerous word, as it turned out, to use within earshot of a child who’d taken it as a challenge, a lifelong crusade to be anything but. He vaguely seemed to remember a time when he’d been terribly worried, even afraid, of how the world perceived him, right up until the point that he’d just decided to… stop.

He settled his cane against his leg, the linen and the urbane cut a pleasing contrast with the cream and deep-brown stripes, the inky blackberry-purple of the dome of glass under his hand. He looked down at the calming pale blue of the silk under Sarah’s fingers, and wondered if she knew just how achingly well the color went with her eyes.

He had to move, as he had done before, break the spell before the moment became more, but this time, he found he couldn’t. The delicate situation between them had reached that point, at last, where there was no easy return, and he honestly wasn’t sure if he felt afraid, grieved, or elated. Perhaps, all three.

“Thank you,” he said, and it was both a quiet acceptance of the compliment and gratitude, more than he could have adequately put into words, for her astonishing gift. “Sarah… it’s wonderful.”

“You haven’t even seen it,” she said, but it came as a whisper, something small and careful that couldn’t break the fragile, vulnerable moment that had fallen over both of them. Surely over both; the clear affection in his eyes was bare now, easy enough to see so near. She could hear him breath, feel it below the sides of her hands which were still lingering over his tie, unmoving.

His eyes flicked down to her mouth and he wetted his lips.

It had been a very long time, years in fact, since a man had looked at her the way Willy was now. She had no illusions about her age, about the way hardship had found a home at the sides of her mouth and the corners of her eyes. But right now, with him, those insecurities were just trifles, forgotten ideas with no room to live in her, and it was a wonder to feel this way again; to feel lovely again, to feel a potent mix of desire and fear again.

Sarah had spent much of her life in service to the needs of others. She could hardly have done otherwise; her family was dearer to her than anything.

But she wanted. She wanted and wanted, and had wanted things like the touch of his hands on her, his mouth, _him_ on her, in all the base, tasteless ways that meant.

Sarah angled her face and moved upwards, propelled by some magic or magnetism or both. His breath was warm against her mouth, against the soft bow of her chin. His eyes were half lidded, lambent, dark and deep.

And then they closed.

He winced in a regretful, agonized sort of way and took her hands, pressing them firmly down and away.

“ _Sarah._ ”

Opening his eyes, he saw the hurt in her face before she could mask it, and that in itself was bad enough, more than enough punishment for his failure to keep his feelings in check. If this was the last time between them when things would feel sound and good and right, he could hardly bear it to come to an end like this. He felt her hands start to pull away and he reached in desperate reaction to keep them in his.

He had long since felt torn both ways, between the fear of being known and all that would mean, and the guilt and panic at the thought of misleading, deceiving, _lying_ to her, the one person he wished could know him best of all. Now, with no choice left, he tried to find some kind of resolve, anything that would show him a way forwards.

“You...” He dropped his head, all but closing his eyes again. A cheap way of hiding, but he wasn’t exactly feeling very brave, just now. _“You’re_ wonderful. And I can’t-”

“Please don’t explain. I-I was being selfish,” she cut in. “Arthur’s parents,” she winced at her own cowardice. She’d feared that Willy’s hesitation to confide his feelings in her was because of Arthur, and now she was using that same excuse to try to obfuscate her own. “I can’t just- only I just thought you might- but I was wrong and- and there’s no harm done, really.”

She didn’t believe it, but she said it anyway. Hers was a frantic, rambling gamble to try to save whatever could remain between them. No matter what fantasies she had invented, whatever futures she had imagined in the twilight of her bedroom, between the hours of awake and dreaming and the sheets of her bed, it was his friendship that was most important to her, and she couldn’t stand to lose that as well.

Sarah’s vision blurred through hot tears, and she wished for her hands back only so that she could hide those from him too.

“I _need_ to explain,” he said. He did let go, then, gently, taking the square of silk from the pocket of the new coat and pressing it back into her hands.

It had been so easy, to say it to Charlie. To an eleven-year-old, all grown-ups seem ancient to start with, and when he’d told the boy he was much older than he appeared, Charlie had taken it entirely at face value. Nothing since had shaken that, or shown him to understand any less than he’d seemed to at first. Charlie, in his own simple, wonderful way, just understood, because it was a thing that couldn’t possibly be that made perfect sense, and the factory was full of _those._

At least he had never misled her, as hollow a comfort as that seemed in this moment. If he ever had, he would have no right to be standing here, now.

He swallowed.

“Sarah… how old do you think I am?”

It was a strange question, one she hadn’t been prepared for, and it had the effect of pulling her out of her heartache for a moment in surprise. She sniffed, and dabbed at her tears.

“How old? I-“

Sarah glanced at the lines that had collected at the corners of his eyes, and the ones that bowed along the plane of his forehead. His hair was a bit thin on top and had greyed slightly at the temples.

“I wouldn’t put you anywhere over forty-five,” she said.

He smiled, sort of. It was a wry, pained little smile wrung out of him by her answer- an answer he’d expected but still, in a faint, quietly desperate way, hoped he wouldn’t receive.

“Forty-five.” He looked down at his shoes again for a moment, the perfect spats she had made for him, then up into her eyes, pulling his back upright and shoulders together like someone heading for their own court-martial. The universe was kind to him, just then, and thanks to the light in the room and the deep shade of her eyelashes he couldn’t make out any part of his own reflection.

“But the factory was closed forty-eight years ago,” he said. “1971, I believe-” A sharp shake of his head. “I believe. I _know._ I never did have a head for figures, but of course I know what year it was… after all, I was the one who closed it.”

Sarah’s face scrunched in confusion.

“You? How could that-? You mean your father closed it. The original Mr. Wonka.”

Sarah’s face burned a little. Of course no one had ever said anything about Willy’s father, though it was sensible enough to assume that there had been another man by that name. But saying it out loud, now, Sarah felt self-conscious. She didn’t actually know the history after all, not the way Charlie did, and she’d certainly never spoken to Willy about it. She realized she was entirely too ignorant on the subject to be throwing out unfounded assumptions.

For a moment, his expression was entirely blank, as if the driving force behind it had just stepped out for a moment to check the mail. Then he closed his eyes and came back in a blink, quick as a light-bulb.

“My father? My father ran a stationer’s in Des Moines. Specialized in pens, mostly. Funny, actually-” His voice rattled over the word, not quite in a laugh, or a fracture. “He, ah… he was allergic to chocolate.”

Despite the fact that Sarah had learned more about Willy’s family in the last ten seconds than she had in the two years she had known him, all that came out of her was faintly was:

“…Iowa?”

Then she closed her eyes, trying to parse what exactly he was trying to tell her. Sarah was good at that sort of thing, at looking at all the fuss and clutter and cutting straight to the point of it. She shook her head. 

“ _Willy,_ ” she said, perhaps more forcefully than she meant to, “how _old_ are you?”

* * *

The workshop was getting dark when Sarah wandered into it. Starlight and the night were threatening outside its fragile windows, and the air was both dusky and warm as she moved through the space like a ghost. She collected up some small things as she went: her purse, some tissue, a red lipstick that had been unceremoniously dropped into a drawer and overlooked until tonight. Sarah plucked the tube from its hiding place and moved to the large, standing mirror, leaning into it as she applied the colour to her lips.

She tried not to think too much about this room, about anything to do with it, really. Lately at least. She tried to forget that it had been nearly three weeks since her and Willy had spoken here. She’d hardly been able to enter it since. It was a painful note, a bitter chord, all wrong and filled with a sense of loss, made worse because she had been left entirely alone to come to terms with it.

She paused a moment, a wave of grief pushing upward, but she chided herself mentally, took a steadying breath, and firmly carried on; tonight wasn’t about him. She had decided to go out. It was the kind of thing she supposed people did to reaffirm themselves. And for all that it was an act of self-care and self-reliance, a way of reclaiming a bit of her sense of self, she knew there was a shallow part to it. A part where it was just nice to imagine that the night might be soft and drunken, that it might allow for kind magicks and beautiful strangers who linger in the confines of smoke hazed rooms and who bloom under the pulse of a four-four swing rhythm.

The much more likely scenario, of course, was that she would dine alone, drink at the bar alone, and feel quite out of place, and go home alone. Probably with a headache.

Sarah stood back, giving herself a final once over. She had found a dress she liked, dark green velvet, with a plunging neckline and a shorter skirt than she would have normally risked. It was long sleeved and form-fitting, luxurious and elegant at once. A lovely gold clip with pearls held her hair to the side, while her matching earrings glinted in the semi dark. Her late husband’s wedding ring dangled from a delicate gold chain around her neck, drawing the eye with it. Sarah wasn’t used to feeling like a graceful, sexual creature. She had a habit of thinking herself too old and too practical for it.

But tonight was different.

In her purse was a ticket for the train. Her destination was a jazz lounge in the downtown of the next town over, and she didn’t intend to be late.

The short landing hallway outside filled with shadows as she shut off the lights, and the long spiral stairs were full of twilight as she descended them, the last faint shreds of sunset through the glass that ran in a wide upwards band to the high stairwell ceiling. The dimensions within the factory were generally nonsensical, like a never-ending Winchester mansion dedicated to confectionery instead of ghosts- but this small part of it was simple enough. The glass, two stories high from bottom stair to roof, showed a slice of the space just next door, the tall rooftop greenhouse. Sheltered in the valley of the innermost ‘V,’ at the very center of the factory’s spiky zigzag roof, this one was full of  _real_ plants, and the glass was alternately starry and clustered with soft green growth. From Sarah’s side, it looked like a window straight into the rainforest.

The greenhouse wasn’t too big, and she could see most of it from her vantage point, halfway up the stairs. Firefly lights in the young trees, smooth pebbly gravel and pots at ground-level, paths between swathes of moss and grass. Although it was strange and out-of-place, this little piece of another world entirely, oddly enough it seemed to be true overall that in some ways, the higher you went in the factory, the more sense and reason you found. While the gargantuan, bonkers sprawl of the factory’s workshops, production lines and creative centers were mostly far underground, Sarah’s workshop was up here, and her family’s home wasn’t too far off. Charlie said that the most important room in the factory was up here somewhere, although Sarah had never quite figured out what it was, and this greenhouse was only a greenhouse, nothing fantastical or extraordinary beyond the care, expertise and success obvious in the lush exotic growth.

That said, nowhere in the factory could escape weirdness entirely. Weirdness had infiltrated the greenhouse, in the shape of a man lying flat on his back as if poleaxed on the mossy main pathway. There was something smallish and furry on his chest, and it seemed to be peacefully asleep, which was clearly more than could be said for him. His gaze was fixed on the glass ceiling, the brightening stars- but as she paused on the stairs her movement must have caught his eye and he turned his head and looked straight up at her. There was no sound through the glass, but his mouth moved, shaping her name.

“Sarah?”

There was no avoiding it- their eyes had met. Slowly, she made her way down the stairs, and caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of the cat scampering off into the foliage, leaves quivering, as Willy levered himself up onto his elbows.

She’d managed to corner him a handful of times in the last few weeks, alone and with the intention of talking about what had happened. But Willy was so loud and quick, turning phrases and skipping off to do one thing or another that each encounter had left her feeling as though she’d been blown around in a windstorm and certainly no better off for it. It wasn’t difficult to see _he_ was avoiding _her._ And it was hurtful, even if he didn’t mean it to be.

But if his harm was unintentional then it was hardly right for her to cause it intentionally. And although she didn’t have it from his mouth what his reasons were, Sarah was quick with figures and could put two and two together without his help.

Their eyes met again as she approached the glass entrance, and a nervous embarrassment crept over her. She had a moment of indecision, hand on the door knob, before she remembered herself and pushed it open, stepping into the moist, inviting air which grazed the exposed skin revealed by her suggestive dress. She wished she had something to cover herself with; she felt foolish and absurd dressed this way, in front of him.

Especially in front of him. Especially now that she knew how he felt.

“Hello.”

She looked stunning, and even that was a pale shadow of the word he needed. He wasn’t sure the word he needed _existed._ The soft mossy tones all around them brought the dark rich green of her dress into splendid contrast, the muted amber lights picked up faint golden shimmers across the velvet, her shape in the half-darkness.

He had never seen her dressed up like this before, so carefully, beautifully. His heart stumbled. For a mad second he thought she might have meant him to see her.

It was a vain, stupid idea, and he turned on it and crushed it, killed it at the root. Still, he had to move, to do something with the electric tremble in his chest, his limbs. He stood to meet her, all-too-aware of a whole battery of small undesirable facts, like the bits of moss clinging all over the back of his vest, the violence that lying any-old-how on the grass had wrought on his temperamental hair, and the various colourful traces of the day on his hands and his sleeves.

It shouldn’t have mattered to him, how he looked to her. God, he wished it didn’t matter, that he could _make_ it not matter. Nearly three weeks, and he could still see her expression perfectly in his mind’s eye. He’d thought he’d been prepared for what might happen when he told her, how she would see him differently, but he hadn’t been prepared at all to stand there and see that difference dawning in her wonderful eyes, or to hear the doors close off to him in her voice as she’d struggled to say something in response. The worst part of it all was, he completely understood.

He tried to smile, and brushed some cat hair from his front.

“I was just catching up with an old friend. Time got away from me,” he said, then immediately wished he’d said anything else.

“You- you look...”

“Oh!” Sarah touched her hair and gripped her purse a little tighter. “Yes, I was… I’m going out,” she said by way of explanation.

“Dancing.”

Her eyes followed the motion of his hand across his fair isle sweater vest, orange cat hair muddling over the OXO of it. His hand was a pale, vivid streak that lead her eye upward to his. It was hard for her to make any sense of him. If she didn’t know better she might have called his look some kind of desire. His eyes had followed the line of her necklace, but then suddenly thought better of it, his mouth tightening into a firm line, tipped downwards at the corners.

Her own eyes lingered on the tuft of hair that had gone awry over his ear. He was so terribly lovely and dear to her that even with this yawning chasm between them she still had to restrain herself from crossing the room, from reaching out to him.

The silence between them stretched and she grasped for something, anything, to fill it.

“Do you like dancing? With others, I mean.”

“Of course,” he said, easily enough, because it was true. “You know the Loompas, they’re fantastic dancers...”

At the same time, he knew exactly what she really meant, and he sidestepped it, nimbly, like a landmine she’d unknowingly slipped under his feet. Dancing with someone else, one singular someone, feet and hands and bodies in time together, entirely wrapped up in each other…

He looked away. He couldn’t stand to think of it any more than he could stand to see her studying him, clear enough to him even at a distance, as if she was looking for clues to his age in his face, his form. Ever since that day in the workshop, he’d been trying everything to give her space, circumventing her with prior appointments and made-up crises and sometimes just by well-timed leaps behind pieces of scenery. He’d wanted to spare her, but he’d also known damn well, on some level, that he was protecting himself from this. Just this, her uncertain pity, the vast blank space that had opened up between them.

“Of course.” She said, and watched as he looked away. She looked away too.

This was impossible. Sarah shrugged her purse off and turned. Seeing a work table littered with cuttings and empty pots, soil remains and a pruning knife, she set her purse down amongst it and swiveled on him again, making a strong approach despite her nerves.

“Willy, I… I understand that things between us have changed,” she began, “but, I value our friendship so deeply. I would hate for us to lose it over… over a mistake.”

It gutted her, killed some part of her to call what had happened a mistake- to think of it the way he must. But she knew, and had always known in some way, that her involvement in his life was very much an afterthought. She was Charlie’s mother, and had it been some other boy who had won the factory, it would have been some other mother with him now; someone like her who he would have needed to get on with for the sake of getting on with.

“A mistake? I-“

She couldn’t know that in some ways- many ways, ways that mattered, dearly- she was his best friend. There was no disloyalty in how he felt. Haava had pointed out that much, led him gently to the truth he’d shied away from, that a human heart was so much bigger than just one person.

Willy knew Sarah still loved her husband. The wedding ring she still wore around her neck wasn’t an easy thing for him to think of, and it hadn’t always been an easy thing to keep himself from feeling hurt or even jealousy towards this stranger who meant so much to her, who he would never know. It was strange, that he didn’t feel anything like that now. The thing that twisted in his gut and rose metallic in his mouth, made it impossible for him to meet her eyes even as she came closer, was another beast entirely.

There were very probably other things she could have said, just as earnest, kind, and sensible, that would have cut him just as deeply, but these were quite enough.

“I understand,” he said. “It's quite- alright. Things change, it’s just the way of the… world.”

Sarah hesitated. Something in his words didn’t quite match up with hers, but how she couldn’t place. It was something about the way he said ‘mistake’ like it was a question, the discomfort in every inch of him, and the hurt writ clear across the tense, crumpled slope of his shoulders.

“Yes… I suppose it is. But… what I mean is… what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want how you feel about me to change.”

When he said nothing to that she cast her eyes around the room. Someone had spent a great deal of time on this greenhouse. The plants were lush and full. An old gramophone had been wheeled in and a pile of records were sat neat and upright in the shelf below it. The cat had wandered and wound its way to the other end of the greenhouse, indifferent to the human drama taking place in it, and lounged back in a wicker chair.

Willy had become distant. She knew that look. He was somewhere deep and unpleasant; some black abyss he was stuck looking into.

He visibly startled when she took his hand.

“You’re lost in your head again,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

He let out a punctured breath and lifted her hand, capturing it in both of his own. So spontaneous and unpredictable in everything else he did, it was more than strange how easily he could be surprised by something as simple as a touch. It was as if somewhere along the way the concept had slipped into disuse, and now he could never quite keep hold of the idea that it could happen, that it was something he could expect. Her hand was warm and light in his.

“How I feel about you,” he said. “How you must feel about me, and how plans… never seem to turn out the way they begin. Imagine-” The word trembled in a way that was half laughter, and half high bright pain. “Imagine if they did, imagine how dull life would be.”

She thought of Arthur, of plans laid to rest or waste; dull, beautiful plans she had dreamed and that would never be, and this one another of them.

Her chest ached like a hard edged stone had been wedged into it, scraping and wrongly shaped against her heart and lungs. She trembled as she brought her cheek to rest against the back of his hand. She tipped her head against it and closed her eyes.

“Willy,” she said softly, her lips grazed the back of his hand, “I never told you how I feel for you. I can’t stand the idea of not telling you, of you existing somewhere in the world without knowing; without me saying them.” She opened her eyes and when they met his her heart trembled too.

“But I’m also afraid.”

She couldn’t bear to keep looking at him, so she reached forward to tuck his hair behind his ear, her eyes trailed down his vest picking out details and committing them- him- to memory, in case that was all that would be left of him for her.

Her mouth tugged downward in a grimace.

When next she spoke she felt as though she were a book being closed; a story that had finally come to an end.

“I don’t have the right to inflict myself on you anymore than I have. But I need to tell you, even at the risk of losing you; I need to tell you that I love you. There shouldn’t ever be any confusion about that.”

As she let her hand drop, he found it, treasured it up again in his own. His throat bobbed- once again, the man who seldom left a quiet moment in any room, who could always weave a clever web of words and capture anyone he chose, was tongue-tied by her, because of her. His eyes searched hers. If it was still painful for him to look at her it was suddenly far more painful to even think of looking away, and he showed it, couldn’t help showing it in his face. There was too much in his wounded, wondering heart for it to stay under his control.

His movement as he lifted her hand was timid, hesitant, as if he was frightened that it could shatter, or that he might shatter, and had no idea which.

“When we met,” he said, “you said that I’d been fictional, to you, like some tall tale up in an ivory tower- and I didn’t mind, that’s all I really cared to be, to...” He waved his free hand, somewhere past the soft vines and hanging leaves, the slumbering cat, the inky wall of glass that looked down over the town through the sharp slice of factory roof. Only for a moment, and then the gesture fell and he found her other hand, lacing her fingers gently, as if he couldn’t bear not to have both her hands in his.

“That was a long time ago,” he said. “A long time- Sarah, I must seem so strange to you, I can’t think how you-”

He stopped.

“I feel scared to death,” he said, and another broken hitch of laughter shivered under his voice like crazing glass. He dropped his head, and the thin tuft of hair she’d only just tidied back slipped forwards again, brushing his brow.

“You’ve given me so much, you deserve so much more… but here and now all I can think is that I want to be real to you. More than anybody else it matters that I’m real to you, Sarah, I love you, I, I… I love you too.”

Sarah looked up from their entwined fingers and stared at him, feeling rather stupid for a moment before her brain caught up with all he had said. Relief and warmth washed over her and she laughed because it was so much at once, and she cried because it was so much at once. Her being was bright light and her blood was the bee-hum of flowers. She squeezed his hand a little tighter.

“You’re not strange,” she gasped, throat tight. “Enigmatic, perhaps. I thought I’d ruined everything. I thought-“

She reached up and pressed the tuft of his hair back, this time running her hand along his jaw, warm and strong under the rhythmic stroke of her thumb. His five o’clock shadow was rough and pleasurable. She wondered if he could hear how hard her heart was beating.

They were both quiet for a moment.

“I can’t vouch for your realness, Willy," she spoke gently into the night air, still vibrating with the red undercurrent of her pulse. "That’s something only you can know. But you should know that I remember what you said, that night in my room. The night Charlie won. You said there would be no more masks. And I don’t feel there have been.”

She looked down to their still entwined hand. His other hand, the one she had let go of, had found its way there. The thumb of it stroked the inside of her wrist.

“All I could think about the last three weeks was that you had been in here- the factory. Not alone, I know you have Haava and Perdia and the others, but… still,” she grimaced, and then continued her train of thought; though it likely didn’t make much sense connected the way it was.

“I don’t care how old you are, Willy. You are such a good and honest man. But sometimes I think you don’t believe it.”

When he looked at her he wanted to celebrate her, every part of who she was, in any way he could. It had become second nature to him to feel this way, but the idea that someone else might see _him_ in the same light, that with so little reference to the face he presented to the world, this wonderful person could feel for him that deeply… he could barely fathom it. When she touched his cheek a deep tremor ran him right through, lightning from her touch like a bright arrow that struck down through his ribs.

Willy shook his head and swallowed. He was afraid to laugh, to jar this fragile peace, but he couldn’t help it. His heart sang and he could hardly catch breath, as he traced his fingers gently along her slender arm, the soft velvet pile of her sleeve.

“Well, it’s certainly the- the first time I’ve ever been accused of having a low opinion of myself,” he stumbled. “And hardly warranted- look at me, holding you up like this, derailing your evening. That’s what I wanted to say,” he finished, jumping from one thread of thought to another as he found this rock-solid truth to steady himself on, and breathe.

“That you look wonderful. That you _are_ wonderful. And I only hope you can believe _that.”_

It was a sort of shock to remember that she was supposed to be headed out, that her whole purpose for this evening had been to be away from him; the last thing she wanted now. Her heart was full and every part of her he touched was sensitive and alive.

She wanted all of him, all that he was willing to give.

Her thumb slid over his lips and her eyes followed it. She then pressed slightly firmer over the middle of his bottom lip before dragging her thumb down over his chin.

“I believe you,” she said, and then leaned upward, his breath hot against her mouth, his own nearly touching hers. She whispered her next words.

“When was the last time anyone kissed you?”

“I...

Even then, as his arm gently encircled her waist, he faltered with the words in his mouth, knowing how they would sound. In this moment the entire world- his entire world- felt drawn in to a single bright point. Only her, her voice, her gentle touch tracing down his throat, her eyes studiously downturned as if she was trying to learn him by heart.

“I haven’t, I… nobody has ever kissed me.”

Perhaps at one time she would have found it surprising, or outrageous, that a man- any man above a certain age- had not participated in some kind of intimacy. But with him it made a certain kind of sense, and it was ignorant in the extreme to assume that the varied spectrums of human relationships were so rigid they could not permit his existence, his experience.

She surprised herself in that she felt no pity for him, only a sense of turning something over and seeing it anew accompanied by the deep understanding that if things were to continue that she had a responsibility to him to see it done correctly.

“You always have a choice,” she breathed.

His Adam’s apple bobbed beneath her thumb.

“Would you like me to kiss you?”

He didn’t need to tell her that it was so much, for him, to know that he trusted her, that she would never break his trust. She knew, she understood where he had found himself even if she couldn’t know the path he’d taken to arrive there.

And now it was as if no time had passed at all, as if this hushed and spellbound handful of moments was just a simple and natural continuation of the other, three weeks back in her quiet workshop. This time, he didn’t look away. He could see himself in the rising moonlight caught in her eyes, and this time, he could bear to.

“I didn’t even know you liked to dance,” he murmured- barely, the end of the word almost lost, because even as he spoke he lifted his free hand up along the soft line of her chin, to a place so natural for it to rest that it was hard to believe one was not made for the other, and kissed her, ardently, fervently; with everything he felt.

Willy never approached things with half measures, she knew. He had a tendency to throw himself in all at once; a sink or swim method, which seemed to follow the idea that no matter what you were doing you would get the hang of it much faster if you did it enthusiastically.

Kissing was, apparently, no exception.

He kissed her firmly, warmly. The normal awkwardness of the act- the clicking of teeth, and bumping of noses- was dealt with swiftly and he followed it up with more enthusiasm, eagerly sampling and exploring her with such an unexpected determination that she gripped his vest in her fists to stay upright.

His evening stubble was rough on her skin, exhilarating and exciting. His hand at her hip had moved up to her back and urged her against him, his arousal evident by the hard shape of him pressed against her hip.

She gasped and he found the inside of her mouth and explored that too.

When he pulled away she felt dazed, a little shaky on her feet, and she laughed out of pure joy.

“You’re wonderful,” she smiled. “I’m so happy, and you’re so wonderful.”

He looked as out of breath and excited as she felt. She leaned up and kissed him again, gently, brushing her lips over his before pulling away.

“I couldn’t possibly leave here tonight without you. Let's go dancing. Together."

And this too, felt natural. The normal hesitation and discomfort at the idea of being _out there_ felt so much more manageable with her next to him. The knowledge that he wouldn’t be alone, might never be alone again, nearly toppled him. He held onto Sarah. His eyes trailed down the open cut of her dress and he was reminded again of how agonizingly good she looked, and the bits of grass still clinging to his sleeves and pants. He remembered the word _plain_ and he gripped her tighter, swallowed.

“Yes. Yes, I’d like that. But, I would need…” He didn’t like thinking about his alter ego very much, his shopkeeper disguise of Mr. William Williams. And bringing up that awful, frumpy, version of himself in front of her, here and now, felt so wrong he couldn’t help but grimace. He took a halting breath.

“A disguise.” He said, looking away from her, then back. “I only have the one, really. I hope you don’t mind being next to a certain Mr. Williams tonight. He’s not the most affable.”

“I think I can manage.” Sarah smiled, pleased that he was even willing to try. “You can wear the suit I made you.”

His face brightened and he pointed upward as if she had just made an incredible declaration.

“A terrific suggestion! The second one tonight!” Willy took her hand and pulled her towards the greenhouse door. She snagged her purse up before it could get forgotten.

“I hope we have time,” Sarah said, following him through. “The train leaves in a half hour. The place I was hoping to go- it’s in the next town over.”

Willy looked down to their hands entwined and felt a new kind of magic in him, one she likely knew.

It was time to show her a different kind.

“I think,” Willy said, “I might know a shortcut.”


End file.
